BUTLER TWP — He's coached 2,000-point scorers Jence Rhoads and Ethan Morton, Butler basketball legends Tyrell Sales and Nate Snodgrass.

John Cooper knew them before most of the sporting public did.

Decades of coaching basketball — primarily at the junior high level — will do that.

And Cooper, 72, doesn't plan on stopping.

He will enter his 50th year of coaching on the hardwood next season. All but a few of those years have been at the seventh-grade level.

“I left Butler for a few years to help (former Golden Tornado boys coach Gene Rodgers) coach the Slippery Rock girls,” Cooper said. “I coached the seventh grade there and was a varsity assistant.

“I coached all of the Rhoads girls. When Gene was done, (then Butler boys coach) Joe Lewandowski asked me to come back to Butler, so I did.”

Cooper has that kind of loyalty. A 1965 Butler graduate, he never played high school basketball himself. He played in recreational leagues at the YMCA and intramural basketball during his years at Slippery Rock University.

After a two-year stint in the Army, Cooper returned home in 1971 and began coaching recreational basketball.

“My neighbor, Dick Doutt, was coaching seventh and eighth grade at the time and told me Butler's sixth-grade coach quit,” Cooper said. “That's how I first got in. I coached rec ball and sixth grade for 11 years or so.

“When Mickey Haley quit coaching the eighth-grade team, Hank Keller moved up from seventh grade and I got the seventh grade job.”

Except for those years at Slippery Rock — where he coached an unbeaten seventh-grade squad — Cooper has remained Butler's seventh-grade coach.

“He's got the energy for it and he's an old-school guy,” Butler athletic director Bill Mylan said of Cooper. “He's been a mainstay, no matter who the varsity head coach has been. That shows the dedication he has.”

Cooper said he likes coaching at the seventh-grade level because it's generally the first level of a young player's development where he's not coached by a player's father.

“They're at the point in their careers where they don't think they know everything yet, so they tend to listen to you,” Cooper said, laughing.

He has no idea how many games his teams have won or lost through the years, nor does he care.

Current Butler varsity coach Matt Clement appreciates that.

“With John, I know those kids are going to learn the absolute basics,” Clement said. “He'll teach them the basic way to shoot the ball, foul shots, how to play under control.

“He's a good coach who knows the game. Breaking kids in with the absolute basics is not a bad thing. Ninety-five percent of the players I've had at Butler were coached by John at some point. I love that they have that background.”

Cooper likes to stress that the word fun begins the word fundamentals.

“I make sure they have fun, but I'm more concerned with teaching kids fundamental drills at that age than I am with winning,” he said. “I'm here to help develop their ability. I enjoy that. I'm comfortable at that level.

“When you instill fundamentals, you instill good habits.”

Cooper recalls when 75 boys would try out for the seventh grade basketball team. He said that was 30 or more years ago.

“Last year, we had 15 guys trying out and we have two teams,” he said of seventh grade. “That's how much it's changed. I had eight guys on my team this year. With six-minute quarters (in junior high), it's not hard to get them all time on the floor. With a 12-player roster, it's challenging, but I still do it. Everybody plays.”

Cooper also remembers Morton averaging more than 20 points per game in seventh grade.

“When you consider the game only has 24 minutes, that's phenomenal,” he said. “A good seventh-grade player averages 10 or 12 points a game. That's how good Ethan was even back then.

“He was the best player I've ever coached here, then it'd be (Nate) Snodgrass ... but there's been a bunch of good ones. I coached Tyrell Sales, the Hartung boys, a lot of kids.”

And at 72, Cooper still gets on the court and demonstrates to the kids what he's talking about.

“But not as much anymore ... I've got two bad knees,” he said with a chuckle.